Tax District May Pay For Library Deland, County Plan To Let Voters Decide

August 7, 1985|By David Karpook of The Sentinel Staff

DELAND — City and county staff members are working toward holding a referendum in November on whether to create a special tax district to pay for a new library, City Manager Scott Rohlfs told commissioners this week.

Rohlfs said at a meeting Monday that he and Assistant County Manager Larry Arrington are preparing for a county council discussion of the library issue Sept. 5. They want to have a complete proposal ready for council consideration and -- if other preliminary work can be completed -- to ask residents to vote on the tax district two months later.

The city has suggested that a new library downtown to replace the crowded Rich Avenue branch could be built through funds collected from a special tax district extending from the Four Townes intersection north to the Putnam County line and from the St. Johns River west to Lake Helen.

The proposed DeLand library would be similar in size and resources to the City Island library. The city's suggestion is in reaction to an offer from Daytona Beach Community College to build a $2 million library -- for joint use by college students and the general public -- at its west Volusia Center under construction at State Road 44 and County Road 4139.

Many DeLand residents have complained that a library at the college campus would be inconvenient, leading the city to begin its discussions with the county on possibly locating the library downtown.

Rohlfs said that among the subjects he and Arrington have reached tentative agreement on is that the city will not have to pay any operating costs for the proposed library.

A recent letter to the city from county council Chairman Jack Ascherl indicated the county may ask DeLand to pay for some furniture and for utilities, but the request was dropped after staff members realized that the county doesn't ask Daytona Beach to pay those costs for the large regional library on City Island.

In other city commission business Monday:

-- Officials of Cablevision Industries of Central Florida Inc. reported that they have completed upgrading work on more than 90 percent of its system in the city. Only about 501 more feet of cable needs to be strung to serve about 28 houses at the north end of town, said Bill Cross of the company's sales department.

City commissioners, saying the company appears to have nearly fulfilled its promise of a year ago to upgrade service, agreed to hire a consultant to review the improvements before taking steps to have a $500,000 performance bond returned to the firm. Cablevision is to pay for the study.

Improvements include stringing new cable, distributing new converter boxes and expanding the company's offerings to 30 channels, including Cinemax, the Disney Channel, the Playboy Channel and Video Hits 1. Faulty converter boxes that were distributed last spring have been replaced for about 99 percent of the company's customers, Cross said.

-- A Winter Park architectural firm obtained initial approval to issue $2.7 million in industrial revenue bonds to pay for renovation of the Whitehair building, a downtown landmark that houses the J.C. Penney department store and several other tenants. The firm, Gallagher-Jochem and Clayton, has said its purchase of the four-story building is contingent on obtaining the tax-free bonds; it wants to close on the property Sept. 20 and begin renovations shortly after.